I was a former senior manager at KPMG and since 1994 the owner of the Marks Group PC, a 10 person customer relationship management consulting firm based outside Philadelphia. I've written six small-business management books, most recently "The Manufacturer's Book of List" and “In God We Trust, Everyone Else Pays Cash: Simple Lessons From Smart Business People.” Besides Forbes, I daily for The Washington Post and weekly for Inc. Magazine, Entrepreneur Magazine and the Huffington Post monthly for Philadelphia Magazine. I am an unpaid contributor to Forbes. I make no compensation from the number of people who read what I write here. Follow me on Google Plus, Twitter, Facebook, and Linked In.

Steve Jobs Was A Jerk. Good For Him.

The praise has been pouring in. And deservedly so. He was a genius. A man that made a tremendous impact on the world. During the week, I probably read thirty or forty blogs and columns about his life and accomplishments. I even wrote a little homage to him myself in the Huffington Post. But I wasn’t learning as much about him as I had hoped. Sure, I learned about his story, his rise with Apple, the “wilderness years,” his triumphant return, the iProducts. But I wasn’t learning much about Steve Jobs the person. The boss.

That is until I read this great piece from Ryan Tate. And I really began to learn something about Steve Jobs. Jobs wasn’t successful just because he was creative, brilliant and hardworking. There are a lot of creative, brilliant and hardworking people running technology businesses. Jobs had an extra little something going on that further separated him from his peers: He was a jerk. Good for him.

I am not creative or brilliant. I work hard. But I like my vacations, my time watching my kids play sports, the odd nap on a Sunday afternoon too. I don’t think I’m anywhere near as hard a worker as Jobs was. And I’m not a jerk like Jobs was. Which is the biggest reason why I’m just a moderately successful business guy, and not a super billionaire. That’s because being creative and hard working isn’t that uncommon. Being a jerk is.

Tate says that Jobs exercised censorship and authoritarianism. To put anything on an Apple device you needed Apple’s permission. “Apple’s devices have connected us to a world full of information,” he writes. “But they don’t permit a full expression of ideas. Indeed the people Apple supposedly serves – the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers – have been particularly put out by Jobs’ lockdown.”

Jobs wasn’t about to let anyone use his products for activities that would negatively reflect on his company. He knew the risks of giving up control. He knew that people would accuse him of restricting free expression. He didn’t care. He was a jerk. My products are misused all the time. I have clients turning off internal controls, resetting security and converting contact management databases into inventory systems because it’s cheaper than buying a true inventory system. Because I’m not a jerk I say nothing. I just take the money. And in just about every case, these same clients have turned into non-clients. Because they inevitably ran into security and operational issues that turned their investment into a loss. And blamed me. I’ll never be as brilliant as Steve Jobs. But if I were to exercise a little more control over how our products are used (in other words: be a jerk more often) I may be a tad more successful.

“Inside Apple,” Tate continues, “there is a culture of fear and control around communication: Apple’s “Worldwide Loyalty Team” specializes in hunting down leakers, confiscating mobile phones and searching computers. In the creepiest example of Apple’s fascist tendencies, two of Apple’s private security agents searched the home of a San Francisco man and threatened him and his family with immigration trouble as part of a scramble for a missing iPhone prototype.” Wow, the Apple Gestapo. I love that too.

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All the windows crew can do is react since they have no capacity for original thought whatsoever. Lame, just like the Windows OS itself. A copy of the Mac, always has been, won’t be around much longer.

Once Apple has OS X running on ARM it will eliminate MSFT from the OS business. They can still sell Office and try to monopolize open standards like email though (some things never change). And there will be laggards aplenty to buy it, no doubt.

I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, and assume your article was in part satirical. In reality, effective management of people has little to do with “being a jerk” and degrading them, abusing them, yelling profanities at them, working them until the point of burn out, stressing the hell out of them, etc… If Jobs really was stupid enough to manage people this way, I would say he succeeded in spite of it, not because of it. I have been in technology for 22 years and I had worked at Apple as a contract employee for a few months in the early 1990s. If you want “A-Team” people, you better treat them like gold. Period. These types of people can write their own ticket into any company they want to work for. Advice: Treat them like garbage at your own peril. Unless they are insecure, masochists, they will leave your company, and even go to work for your competition.

Exactly right… except he did take care of his talent in the form of often shady stock option deals. Backdating scandal ring a bell? Remember he had to give up what amounted to $5.8 billion in stock options for himself for a paltry $1.7billion in order to avoid any further investigations surrounding compensation thru stock options and backdating their appraisal. He was a master of shifty stock options as compensation and trade (Disney/Pixar).

Geez… you’d think that after having the entire weekend, you could come up with an original article. You’re right… you’re clearly not as hard a worker as Jobs was. But you have problem outsourcing your work and putting your label on it.

As for Jobs… his company was successful at it’s mission. But some might suggest that it’s was flawed. To improve the human condition for some, at the expense of others seems a little less then noble.

He was an opportunist for sure. And while I thought that sometimes Apple was a bit too ‘closed’… that was his decision and it never really bothered me that much.

He was a visionary for sure. But his vision seemed to be more for the product than the individual. Some will call him ‘brilliant’ for the wa he treated people. Others will call him a ‘jerk’. And some will call him much, much worse.

The truth is, he’s dead now and the cowards will critique him now, when they wouldn’t 6-months ago. They may be right in everything they say… but the truth is, they ware no better than Jobs for waiting to make their case.